Training doctors in the new English NHS: Hidden agenda is obvious

Editor—This “analysis” from the Office of the Strategic Health Authority is simply an agenda for training NHS apprentices with limited understanding or knowledge of medical sciences.1 The cat is out of the bag. The author says that it has always seemed incongruous that the brightest of school leavers, spending five or more years in the most expensive of higher education courses, are still not ready for their job for several years. Incongruous to whom? Not the doctors or the patients. The teaching of medical sciences is expensive and time consuming but essential to combat quackery, superstition, and habit.